just your every day curiosities and musings

Month: October 2011

It’s true. This Catholic twenty-something, after 25 years of life sans romance, officially has a boyfriend. Indeed, I have been missing from my blog, and my new relationship is partially why. So, why, you ask? Like a good Catholic (heh!), I shall confess. To answer simply: Time!

I want to talk to my boyfriend all the time. I want to hear his voice all the time. I want to hold his hand all the time. I want to be in his arms all the time.

So on my first visit to the Adoration chapel as a no-longer-single young woman, for a moment, I felt a bit odd. I knew that Jesus knew that– for the first time– I was looking at a young man with the same loving eyes that I had only looked at Him, Jesus, with all my life. And I thought that maybe Jesus would be jealous.

Yet kneeling there for the first time as a young woman in a relationship, the very next moment, I believe that the Holy Spirit placed in my human spirit a true sense of calm and joy. No, my LORD and my GOD Jesus Christ was not jealous, because He knew that when I looked into my boyfriend’s eyes, it was the mystery of Love Incarnate that I saw deep down in them. Jesus knew that in my boyfriend, I saw Him!

In His usual sneaky and Master-mind (pun-intended!) kinda way, Jesus knew that I was so drawn and attracted to my boyfriend because He, Jesus, was stamped all over his, my boyfriend’s, image and likeness!

As I sat there gazing at my LORD, I was reminded of how I simply loved gazing into the eyes of my boyfriend. And my “God is AMAZING moment” came when I realized that this new human romance I was now experiencing was merely an imperfect reflection of the perfect Divine Romance that I was already in! I may have been sans romance for my whole life, but I surely was never sans Romance.

In Adoration, which I at that point had been frequenting daily for nearly two years, I simply loved to talk to Jesus, to listen to Jesus, to reach out for Jesus’s hand, to be held by Jesus. To gaze at Jesus. Indeed, before my boyfriend and I were “official,” I remember looking up into his two eyes, and thinking: I could gaze into those eyes forever. But it didn’t surprise me! I knew that behind those two eyes was Our Creator.

I knew if I said yes to entering a holy, Christ-centered, chaste relationship with this young man, I would be saying yes to a boyfriend who could not only offer me human romance, but help to lead me even more deeply into the Divine Romance that my heart was destined for since the beginning of time.

I knew that my boyfriend, too, would never be jealous of my First Love, Jesus. And just like our awesome Saint Joseph, my boyfriend loves, adores, keeps, and protects Christ in his heart– and I knew that he would help to make sure that I love, adore, keep, and protect Christ in my heart, too.

When asked why she spent hours in the Adoration Chapel, Mother Theresa replied: “I look at Him, and He looks at me.” She was referring to Jesus, of course. My ardent hope is that every Catholic twenty-something in a relationship, when they gaze into the eyes of their significant other, sees not only him or her, but also sees the Mystery of Love Incarnate– that Divine Romance with Jesus Christ Himself– that they are called to!